Two Australian restaurants make the world's top 100

Sydney fine diner Quay and chef Dan Hunter’s regional Victorian restaurant Brae have made the top 100 on the World’s 50 Best list.

The annual UK-based awards released the list of restaurants ranked 51-100 ahead of Monday’s announcement of the top 50.

But the news means it’s likely that only Ben Shewry’s Melbourne restaurant, Attica, is the only Australian place to make the top 50, suggesting Tourism Australia’s year-long, multi-million dollar “invite the world to dinner” campaign in 2014 failed to have a lasting impact on the top chefs and other “influencers” who visited the country during that time.

TA is set to launch a new phase of the campaign in coming weeks, having lured former No. 1, Noma, to Australia earlier this year.

Peter Gilmore’s Quay at the overseas passenger terminal, which featured on the 50 best for several years, just made the cut at 98, dropping 40 places in 12 months, while Brae, in Birregurra, comes in at 65, up 22 places. It’s the second time Brae, a 2-hour drive southwest of Melbourne, has featured since opening in 2014.

However, Martin Benn’s Sepia in Sydney, at No. 84 last year, appears to have fallen from the list completely. Business Insider understands Benn will not be at the awards announcement in New York next week, but cannot confirm if he had been invited.

But the World’s 50 Best is more a popularity contest about what’s currently cool, rather than a critical assessment, with around 1000 industry professionals, known as “the academy” casting their votes based on restaurants they’d eaten at during the previous 18 months.

This year, the man many regard as America’s finest chef, Thomas Keller, is left without either of his flagship restaurants in the top 50. The French Laundry in California, twice named the No. 1 restaurant, is now ranked at 85, while New York’s Per Se, ranked No. 6 just three years ago, has plummeted to 52.

Another culinary titan, Alain Ducasse, saw his eponymous restaurant at the Plaza Athénée fall from the top 50, to 58, while another two former darlings of the Paris scene, Pascal Barbot’s L’Astrance (57), and Inaki Aizpitarte’s cult bistro Le Chateaubriand, where diners queue on the footpath before lunch every day, is now at 74.

In recent years the 50 Best has branched out to launch Asian and Latin American versions of the awards, but did not include Australia in the Asian list. Sydney chef Tetsuya Wakuda’s Singapore restaurant, Waku Ghin, appears to have fallen from the top 100, after coming in at 70 in 2015.

Seven restaurants from Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2016 feature in the World’s Best 51-100 list, while expatriate Australian David Thompson’s Nahm is expected to feature in the top 50, along with former Newcastle chef Brett Graham’s London restaurant, The Ledbury, which made No. 20 last year.

The top 50 is due to be announced in New York on Monday night, US time.